More searching

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In a previous post I discussed ways in which it is possible to search for materials on endangered languages in various archives around the world (see also Nick Thieberger’s post on how much material doesn’t make it into archives). There is now another tool, namely the Virtual Language Observatory developed by the Max Planck Institute … Read more

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Deeply depressing news from the Northern Territory

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Central Australia is home to some of Australia’s few communities where Aboriginal languages are still spoken by children: Warlpiri, Pitjantjantjara, Pintupi and some Arandic languages. For many years they had mother-tongue-medium instruction programs at school, often taught by trained Indigenous teachers and supported by linguists and teacher-linguists. Governmental support for these programs has eroded over … Read more

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Visuals of now

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In the early days of this blog, Jenny Green did a really nice post Sand talk – and how to record it which was one of our first posts with – gasp – photos. It showed how she recorded sand stories using 2 cameras and a ladder. Now you can follow the new Central Australian … Read more

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History in the making

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Since 2005 I have been teaching a one Term introductory course each year on Historical Linguistics at SOAS and enjoying it a lot. The students especially like the coverage of semantic change, loanwords, and borrowing and language contact. One of the (standard) topics in this area that I cover is so-called folk etymology and typically … Read more

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Gresham College webcasts

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On 16th June, Nick Ostler, Mark Turin and I participated in a packed symposium at Gresham College in London (founded in 1597 and the capital’s oldest Higher Education Institution — read about its fascinating history here). The Symposium was entitled Rare and Endangered Languages, and the topics of our talks were as follows: Nick Ostler … Read more

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What’s a Warrambool?

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‘What’s a Warrambool?’ asks one Rob Brennan in Westprint Friday Five 2011.6.24 (Replies from others are now in Westprint Friday Five 2011.7.1.) The usual English dictionaries are no help, not even the AND. Warrambool is a good example of a word borrowed from an Australian language into local English, but which, although well-known in its region, has not spread through Australian English (or beyond!).

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Podcasts on SOAS radio

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Several podcasts about endangered languages are now available from the student-run online radio station SOAS Radio. They include: An interview with Gabriela Perez Baez, curator of Linguistics at the Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. Gabriela talks in depth about her experience of researching endangered Zapotecan languages in Mexican and US immigrant communities. Her … Read more

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Where are the records?

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Further to my post about the SOAS Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) holding much less (70 collections) than could be expected given the number of ELDP funded projects (216), I thought it would be interesting to look at archival holdings and the amount deposited in language archives now, after a decade and a half of language … Read more

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Iwantja Band launch ‘Palya’

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Around the remoter parts of Australia there’s a ferment of contemporary music and Australian languages. I had a taste of this a week ago in Tennant Creek, where I learnt of a freshly released album from Iwantja Band, now on their launch journey (Iwantja Band launch Palya).

cover art for 'Palya'
Cover art for 'Palya'

I caught some of the enthusiasm from Patrick McCloskey, a freelance music producer working with the Winanjjikari Music Centre1 at Tennant Creek.

Most of the songs on the album (eg Kungka Nyuntu, Wamanguru) are in Pitjantjatjara / Yankunytjatjara, languages spoken at Iwantja (perhaps better known as Indulkana), some 900km south of Tennant Creek. It suited the band to use a studio not in a city, or in intermediate Alice Springs, but at Winanjjikari in Tennant Creek. And there is more to the mix, as the band’s manager says in an interview:

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Notes

  1. The name is Warumungu, wina-njji-kari ‘sing-Nom-Genitive’; see also WMC’s blog

You gotta be in it to win it

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Peter Austin’s blog post deals with online endangered language archive searchability. As one of the targets of his latest post, PARADISEC apparently does not provide him with the results he wants in searching a catalog. Searching for ‘Educational material’ in a catalog makes lots of assumptions about the way that catalog has been constructed, one of which must be that the term is provided by the catalog or that the typical depositor would use the term in their freeform description of the item. Strangely, the answer he offers is not to provide the infrastructure on which such searches may succeed in future, but to advocate a folksonomy in which such searches will always be sure to fail.

The post is an advertisement for what is undoubtedly a very nice interface to a set of material held by ELAR, but we should also bear in mind the large amount of funding that ELAR/ELDP have had, so we would hope for at least a nice looking webpage after eight years now. It is also interesting that ELAR holds only 70 collections after ELDP has funded 216 projects, what has happened to the rest of the material, or am I being too commodifying to think of such a thing?

The comments on the post raise OLAC – a great service that provides information for the broader community (including linguists, but especially speakers who can access it via google), harvesting information from archives around the world every 8 hours to update its language documentation index. OLAC provides a system for digital archives to maximise the searchability of their catalogs. There are 45 digital archives who take advantage of this free service. That represents almost all language archives in the world but to date ELAR has unfortunately chosen not to be part of that community.

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